Bishop Conley will be the keynote speaker at this year's colloquium. That alone would make it worth going.

I can assure you that it isn't anything liturgical that's causing the vocations in Brooklyn. It's a diocese made up of ethnic parishes, which probably have a better track record of vocations.

The chant conference that I mentioned above is to draw 220 people.

Lincoln. Nebraska. 220 people.

Wow.

(This priest also told me that allegedly, Bugnini never celebrated a Sung Mass in his entire life. So I think his new nickname should be "Annibale Lecta".)

That doesn't surprise me.

I was just telling Matthewj the other day that +Bruskewitz said the quickest pontifical Mass we've ever had here in Birmingham. You Midwesterners don't mess around! ;-)

This was a pontifical Mass in English...not sure about Latin! :)

Bugnini emphasises, in his description of this "demo" and its aftermath, that opposition to singing at Mass was concentrated among the English speaking prelates.

The Irish influence, to which Day attributes this in "Why Catholics Can't Sing", was even stronger proportionally here than in the USA. Why Irishmen should not want to sing in church when they sing so freely in pubs and at home is a complete mystery to me. I grew up in a Benedictine parish, and went to a Benedictine school which took congregational participation in chant as normative, so this attitude is foreign to me.

Why Irishmen should not want to sing in church when they sing so freely in pubs and at home is a complete mystery to me.

As I understand it, it used to be illegal in the British Isles to be Catholic, and considered treason to not obey the Church of England, whose supreme leader is, of course, the British monarch. For fear of losing their lives, silent Masses became normal for them.

As for why they break out into four part harmony without being asked, I can check with my colleague who is Episcopalian and ask her if she has any ideas, but I imagine she will tell me it has to do with training: it is expected in the CofE that the music minister is a fully trained, professional musician, capable of teaching and performing the highest level of sacred music. The faithful are likewise taught to sing from an early age, and then there is the CofE tradition of child choristers and the Royal School of Church Music that provides high levels of training. Combine the training and expectation of high level church music, and the fact that the four parts are available in every hymnal they use and you get a situation that completely encourages congregational four-part singing.

Matthew,

Evidently you haven't been paying attention to the right sources of information. Students have only a passing-fad interest in the ways of worshipping God in the past. Additionally, ad orientem worship is only suggested by African Cardinals who can't teach us anything.

This is funny, because English Protestants seem to break out in 4-part harmony without being asked.

I think you mean English Anglicans, with the Methodists... although both groups are now dying out.

Why Irishmen should not want to sing in church when they sing so freely in pubs and at home is a complete mystery to me.

Different style of music! I love singing Carols (Oxford book of Carols), but would never sing them in church, most of the best ones are not suitable.

Yet one more reason I'm not terribly fond of falling back on +Heenan

++Heenan, I am told is the main reason that Westminster kept their choirs and school. He had a difficult path to tread and preserved what he could in the face of the destructors that had so much success elsewhere.

CofE tradition of child choristers

This Tradition is pre-Reformation...

It is not really fair to compare the musical traditions of Catholics vs. Anglicans. Hymns are an important part of the Anglican service, they have been singing vernacular songs / hymns for a very long time. Their Hymnals over the last 100+ years have not had the changes that the Catholic Hymnals have undergone.

While English Catholics have a tradition of singing vernacular Hymns these were generally only sung at devotions / processions, Not at Mass. I believe that it was more common for a choir to sing the Mass, with more limited congregational singing.

Of course with the N.O. we now have a liturgy that has allowed the singing of Hymns at Mass, but with the far from settled liturgy, the multiple changes in the Hymnals, and the collapse in Mass attendance, we have not had the stability needed to build a strong tradition of congregational singing.

Although (as a PIP) I do sing them for want of being offered something better.

I have something better: the Graduale Romanum, and I have it in multiple formats. I can bring it with me to each and every Mass, and sing from it at will. The problem, I think, is that current Church leadership doesn't want to hear it: "the people" can't sing it.